Transcript Science and Religion

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Science and religion
Science and religion
Science and religion
Science and religion
Science and
Religion
Science and Religion
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What is Religion?
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What is Science?
Science and Religion
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The word religion derives from the Latin word
to bind or to ligate (tie).
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It means bind to the gods
Science and Religion
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The word science comes from the Latin word
for knowledge
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It occurs in the word conscious
Science and Religion
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Religion is a belief in something
The belief is not necessarily substantiated by
physical or material evidence
Religious knowledge obtained through holy
writings, authority, revelations and religious
experiences
Religionists have faith or trust in such
knowledge
Science and Religion
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Religious knowledge is qualitative not
quantitative.
Religious knowledge is not gotten through
measurement
In religion knowledge is taken as either true or
false.
Religious knowledge is neither progressive,
nor tentative.
Science and Religion
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Scientific knowledge is a relationship between
observations
The observations are subject to refinement
Scientific knowledge is progressive and
tentative
Scientific knowledge is neither true nor false,
but rather consistent with the observations and
consistent with prior knowledge
Science and Religion
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Science formulates quantifiable questions
Science uses units, numbers, direction along
with mathematics to express knowledge
Numbers are quantitative.
Units are not a quality. Units are dimensions
representing time, energy, weight, volume,
length, brightness. Dimensions are
independent variables
Assumptions of Science
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The world is real.
The real world is knowable and
comprehensible.
There are laws that govern the real world.
Those laws are knowable and comprehensible.
Those laws don't [radically] change according
to place or time, since the early stages of the
big bang.
Assumptions of Science
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Nature is understandable
The rules of logic are valid
Language is adequate to describe the natural realm
Human senses are reliable.
Mathematical rules are descriptive for the physical
world
Basic Assumptions of Science
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Assumptions are accepted without proof
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Form the basis of all scientific thinking
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In other words, the basic assumptions of science are
accepted on faith. Interesting.
Limitations of Science
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Science can't answer questions about value. For
example, there is no scientific answer to the
questions, "Which of these flowers is prettier?" or
"which smells worse, a skunk or a skunk cabbage?"
And of course, there's the more obvious example,
"Which is more valuable, one ounce of gold or one
ounce of steel?" Our culture places value on the
element gold, but if what you need is something to
build a skyscraper with, gold, a very soft metal, is
pretty useless. So there's no way to scientifically
determine value.
Limitations of Science
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Science can't answer questions of morality. The problem of
deciding good and bad, right and wrong, is outside the
determination of science. This is why expert scientific
witnesses can never help us solve the dispute over abortion: all
a scientist can tell you is what is going on as a fetus develops;
the question of whether it is right or wrong to terminate those
events is determined by cultural and social rules--in other
words, morality. The science can't help here.
Limitations of Science
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Science can't help us with questions about the
supernatural. The prefix "super" means "above."
So supernatural means "above (or beyond) the
natural." The toolbox of a scientist contains only
the natural laws of the universe; supernatural
questions are outside their reach.
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A statement a scientist should not make (if he or she is well
trained and is not manipulating you):
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Evolution is true.
The Big Bang happened.
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Better statements:
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The theory of evolution is by far the best model we have to
explain both the fossil evidence and the genetic evidence with
regard to the origin of all species.
The Big Bang model is in dramatic agreement will all known
facts about the origin and history of the universe.
Science seeks consistency, not “truth.” What is the simplest
and most consistent explanation of the observation.
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Science and Religion
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Religion and science ask different kinds of
questions and define words differently
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Religion and science appear as if they were
two incommensurate paradigms addressing the
identical information arena
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Questions science asks and attempts to answer:
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Question religion asks and attempts to answer:
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When, where, how many, why (by what means)
How does a living thing function?
What are the fundamental forces?
Why am I here?
Is that the right thing to do?
How valuable am I?
Does God exist? Does God act (theism)?
Will that God respond if I pray?
Questions both ask (but by different means)
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How and when did life originate?
How and whendid the universe originate?
Science and Religion
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Religion offers certainty
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Science is tentative
Should I take vitamins? What’s the best birthing method?
Is the Pritikan diet the best or is a vegan diet better?
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Though science is tentative; it is also efficacious and
progressive
Unanswered questions which seem to
relate to science
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Consciousness (what is consciousness and why are we
conscious?)
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Origins of life
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Origin of the universe. Why is there anything (as opposed
to nothing)
Why is the universe comprehensible
to humans?
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Torrance finds the universe's comprehensibility
astonishing: “the fact that it [the universe] is
comprehensible at all to us is a miracle, indeed
the most incomprehensible thing about it.”
Torrance, Reality and Scientific Theology, 53.
Unsolved Problem- Life
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For nearly 50 years since the Miller and Urey
experiment which synthesized amino acids and
nucleoside in vitro the hope for the artificial
creation of life appears ever more distant than
ever.
Knowledge
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Are there question asked by art or religion?
Are those question understood by Science?
Can science answer the questions asked by
painting or religion?
Can science decide which painting or which
musical score is great and which is dross?
Knowledge
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Knowledge is a relationship between ideas about observations.
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Are there other ways of knowing in addition to the ways of
Science?
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Are painting, dance, music, religion other ways of knowing?
Scientism
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Scientism is the acceptance of scientific theory
and scientific methods as applicable in all
fields of inquiry about the world, including
morality, ethics, art, and religion
Materialism
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“We exist as material beings in a material
world, all of whose phenomena are the
consequences of material relations among
material entities." In a word, the public needs
to accept materialism, which means that they
must put God in the trash can of history where
such myths belong.”
Richard Lewontin
Retrospective essay on Carl Sagan in the January 9, 1997 New York Review of
Books,
Scientific Materialism
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Scientific Materialism accepts only one reality: the
physical universe, composed as it is of matter and
energy. Everything that is not physical,
measurable, or deducible from scientific
observations, is considered unreal. Life is
explained in purely mechanical terms, and
phenomena such as Mind and Consciousness are
considered nothing but epiphenomena - curious
by-products, of certain complex physical
processes (such as brain metabolism)
Scientific Materialism
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There is no God,
No angels
No Devil
No good
No evil
No survival of physical death,
No non-physical realities, and
No ultimate meaning or purpose to life
No Heaven
No afterlife
Scientific Materialism
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Only that which can be observed and measured
through the technique of Scientific Method is
real, and everything else is unreal.
The Religiousness of Science
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“You will hardly find one among the
profounder sort of scientific minds
without a peculiar religious feeling of
his own. But it is different from the
religion of the naive man. For the
latter God is a being from whose care
one hopes to benefit and whose
punishment one fears; a sublimation
of a feeling similar to that of a child
for its father, a being to whom one
stands to some extent in a personal
relation, however deeply it may be
tinged with awe. But the scientist is
possessed by the sense of universal
causation.”
Einstein's Faith
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'Science without religion is lame, religion without
science is blind.' So Einstein once wrote to explain his
personal creed: 'A religious person is devout in the sense
that he has no doubt of the significance of those superpersonal objects and goals which neither require nor are
capable of rational foundation.'
His was not a life of prayer and worship. Yet he lived by
a deep faith--a faith not capabIe of rational foundation-that there are laws of Nature to be discovered. His
lifelong pursuit was to discover them. His realism and
his optimism are illuminated by his remark: 'Subtle is
the Lord, but malicious He is not' ('Raffiniert ist der
Herrgott aber boshaft ist er nicht.'.'). When asked by a
colleague what he meant by that, he replied: 'Nature
hides her secret because of her essential loftiness, but
not by means of ruse' ('Die Natur verbirgt ihr Geheimnis
durch die Erhabenheit ihres Wesens, aber nicht durch
List.').
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Flew is increasingly persuaded that
some sort of Deity brought about
this universe, though it does not
intervene in human affairs, nor does
it provide any postmortem
salvation. He says he has in mind
something like the God of Aristotle,
a distant, impersonal "prime
mover." It might not even be
conscious, but a mere force. In
formal terms, he regards the
existence of this minimal God as a
hypothesis that, at present, is
perhaps the best explanation for
why a universe exists that can
produce complex life
The History of Science and Religion
Chaos vs Cosmos
God vs the “gods”
Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274 )
Roger Bacon
Bacon’s advice:
To study Natural Philosophy,
use;
“External experience,
aided by instruments, and made
precise by mathematics.”
William of Ockham
His philosophy of science:
“Nothing is assumed
as evident unless it is known
per se or is evident by
experience, or is proved by
authority of scripture.”
Nikolai Copernicus
“True assumptions
must save the
appearances.”
Galileo Galilei
“The Bible was written to
tell us how to go to heaven,
not how the heavens go”
“In discussions of physical
problems we ought to begin
not from the authority of
scriptural passages, but from
the sense-experiences and
necessary demonstrations.”
Sir Isaac
Newton
The
Mechanical
Universe
The Enlightenment: The rise of Deism and
skepticism
Voltaire
Creator of
Modern
Religious
Skepticism
Says the skeptic:
“Extraordinary
claims require
extraordinary
proof.”
David Hume
Statue of Joseph Priestley
Founder of the Unitarian Church
LaPlace
About God:
“I have no
need of that
hypothesis”
How Old is the Earth?
Hutton
Lyell
How Old is
the Earth?
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James Hutton, 1795 Uniformitarianism “No vestige of a
beginning, no concept of an end.”
“It is mere rubbish
to think at this
point of the origin
of life. One might
as well think of the
origin of matter.”
Charles Darwin
The Conservative Christian Reaction
Scopes “monkey trial” 1925
Clarence Darrow and
William Jennings
Bryan
1940’s and
afterward:
Creationism
Bad Science!
Intelligent Design: An Improvement?
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Irreducible Complexity Does this “disprove
evolution?”
The Anthropic Principle
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A possible explanation for “why” the laws of the
universe are what they are.
The laws of the universe are what they are so that
we (ie human beings) can exist.
Can Science and Religion peacefully coexist?
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The Language of
God
Reasons Collins believes in God
1. There is something instead of nothing.
2. The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics.
3. The Big Bang.
4. Nature does not solve the problem of why.
5. The existence of time.
6. Fine tuning of the universe. The “Goldilocks
Paradox.”
7. Ockham’s Razor.
8. The existence of moral law.